DOS ain't dead - Accessing SATA devices in DOS

Accessing SATA devices in DOS | FreeDOS and 2 TiB size (DOSX)

posted by tom , Germany (West), 10.01.2008, 20:45

> > IMO it should support anything up to 2^32 sectors (2TB)
>
> should is good ... but was this tested carefully ?

there aren't that many 2 TB drives around, but it was tested on
my 2 TB RAID drive. And AFAIK there no problems reported so far

> I could well boot both FreeDOS and EDR-DOS and use C: , "D:" with XP was
> invisible for DOS (both, correct), and FAT32 E:/D: wasn't accessible with
> FreeDOS (strange errors, failure to find sector / follow cluster chain ?),
> but worked well with EDR-DOS.

FreeDOS is a bit picky before allowing access to >8GB
other then that, it should work up to 2 TB (if the BIOS supports >128 GB)

> This might be related to minor bug with whining about "suspicious"
> partitions at startup - installed FreeDOS several times (1 or 2 HD's of
> cca 3 ... 16 GiB, several FAT 16 and FAT32 partitions) , and pretty
> always one partition was "bad" - but no further problems, read and write
> OK.

Of course, it would be helpful, if you would report these warinings (that's what warnings are good for)

> There is also the possible writing-huge-file-bug pending, sorry no new
> results about it.

there are no 'possible' bugs.
there are either bugs, or there aren't.
How should we debug 'possible bugs' ?

> Can anyone else test ? Laaca ? :hungry: What is the biggest HD
> verified to work ? The biggest partition size ?

Drive Snapshot users have big disks, and at least partially these are FAT32.
So you can assume that upto ~500 GB is tested daily

> The highest partition
> start (was cca 120 GiB then, and this might be the crucial problem) ?

that's a BIOS problem; nothing that xxDOS could or should do about that limit.
Though it can make a difference if UDMA/UIDE is loaded or not.

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Complete thread:

Accessing SATA devices in DOS - Japheth, 14.08.2007, 11:58 (DOSX)
- Accessing SATA devices in DOS - avoskov, 14.08.2007, 19:06
  - Accessing SATA devices in DOS - Japheth, 14.08.2007, 22:18
    - Accessing SATA devices in DOS - DOS386, 16.08.2007, 09:56
      - Accessing SATA devices in DOS - tom, 09.01.2008, 20:38
        Accessing SATA devices in DOS - sol, 09.01.2008, 22:30
        Accessing SATA devices in DOS | FreeDOS and 2 TiB size - DOS386, 10.01.2008, 00:47
        Accessing SATA devices in DOS | FreeDOS and 2 TiB size - tom, 10.01.2008, 20:45
        Accessing SATA devices in DOS | FreeDOS and 2 TiB size - Steve, 11.01.2008, 00:19